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Finding The Right Path

It’s been a long time coming but we finally have a new development diary video for you to watch, everything has started to come together this past two weeks so we finally have something worthy of being shown. I’ll get into detail about what we have been up to after the video for those who want to read the wall of text that follows.

Path Finding

So this has been a royal pain in Dan’s side over the past few months, after several re-writes on his side of things and a few changes on my side with tile map code and the like he has finally got the system working and in-game. Hurrah! It works really well so far minus a few small issues that Dan is sure to fix later down the line and it really helps when navigating around by mouse/touch input as you can see in the video. For those who don’t want to play using mouse/touch there will also be a keyboard/game pad input system available too. This system will also be used for AI patrol logic and the combat screen so it’s been really important to get this working and working right.

Tile Maps

The tile map system as I said last update has had quite a considerate re-write because quite simply it was a little broken and needed to be fixed to work with the new artwork. I’ve ironed out the last few issues that were left with it so that it is now incredibly precise when drawing and converting from screen space to map space.

I’ve also tackled some of the things I’ve been wanting to do for a while with the system so the draw order is now fixed and allows Spine artwork to be drawn behind height tiles, the combat grid and other elements can be drawn above the base tiles but below everything else, the entire map can be tinted a specific colour which is mainly used for the combat screen and the whole map is cropped to the screen so there is no drawing done off screen to improve drawing on mobile devices.

Combat Grid

Something that needed to be looked into before going head long into tackling the combat was planning the way the combat grid would work and designing it’s aesthetic. This is something else that I’ve got done and put into the game all be it in a basic manner.

Lots More

There’s also been a lot of core code updates happening that don’t entirely come across in the video. We’ve had a bit of a shift around and clean up of the main classes to improve things for what we were doing and for the future as the way I had tackled them was a bit strange.

The intro screens can now be skipped and I’ve massively improved and changed the screen and screen management system which will help later down the line. Spine artwork and the process of creating the art has also improved to allow me to make it quicker as well as supporting future clothing/skin changes. The tile map art generation and map creation has inevitably been worked on now too so we have a solid technique for creating this new style art and getting it into the game.

What’s Next?

Now the path finding is tackled to a decent state Dan is going to be looking at enemy A.I. Logic for patrolling and guarding, line of sight for player detection as well as reacting to the player once he is seen. Hopefully this should be shown in the next development diary and once done Dan will be making way with the combat mechanic… exciting!

For myself, I’m split between making sure Dan has all the art required for the combat screens as well as having a re-write of the user interface system.